Armed with wooden spoons, Albury City ranger Glen Hempel stood eye to beady-eye with the spikiest challenge of his career.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Mr Hempel, who last year helped rescue Digger the wombat who burrowed under a Lavington house, experienced another unusual day on Tuesday – extracting an echidna who had made itself a home in Robbie Mackinlay’s East Albury garage.
Mr Mackinlay said the echidna – named either Eric or Spike, depending who you ask – had made its way under a garage door through the cats’ entrance.
He said he wasn’t interested in inviting their spiky visitor becoming a permanent member of the family.
“We’ve got enough pets at home,” he said. “I’m not sure how it would get on with our two cats and three dogs.”
RELATED NEWS:
Mr Hempel used his ‘technical echidna tools’, also known as wooden spoons, to scoop the creature into a carrier.
“The trick is to get something underneath, something smooth, so the wooden spoons were perfect at the time,” he said.
From there, the echidna was released to a new home in Mungabareena Reserve near a nice, juicy ant nest.
Mr Hempel said he’d rescued owls from QEII square, kangaroos from backyards and helped families of ducks safely make their way through the CBD to water, but had never before been called to an echidna job.
Mr Hempel said as the city expands and develops houses in formely unoccupied land, backyard encounters with wildlife were becoming more common.
“You find animals [and echidnas] don’t always want to move out, so they learn to live around us” he said.
Earlier this month a red bellied black snake made an unannounced court appearance in Albury and needed to be removed from a courthouse lift.
Mr Hempel said as the weather warms up, residents need to remember snakes are about and dogs should be kept safe and leashed in bushland and near rivers.
He said residents should never try to kill or move a snake themselves but should call Albury council for a reference or a snake catcher direct.
Receive our daily newsletter straight to your inbox each morning from The Border Mail. Sign up here